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Yes, Your Appearance Can Work Against You

I’m not sure if this falls into the “good news” or “bad news” category, but it turns out that your audience may have already made up their mind about listening to what you have to say even before you open your mouth to speak. Do I have your attention now?

What The Researchers Have Discovered About First Impressions

We’ve always been taught that the opening of a speech is the most critical part of any speech because it is at that time that you have everyone’s attention and they are trying to make up their minds as to whether or not to listen to you. However, researchers are now telling us that that decision is being made even earlier.

In fact, the audience started making up their minds about you as you got up and started moving towards the podium. What happens is that everyone makes a first impression about you upon seeing that you are the speaker (yeah, I know it’s not right, but it’s what we all do so get over it) and then that first impression is used to interpret everything that you do after that.

This conclusion is not without its detractors. There are some that say that the first impression is not as strong as many believe. Others believe that we get a chance to form a second first impression after the first meeting. This may be true, but as speakers we may never get that second chance so we should be careful to make the best first impression possible.

How Can A Speaker’s Words Make A Good First Impression?

A million years can pass from when the person who is running the meeting starts to introduce you to when you actually take the stage. During that time a lot can happen and you need to make sure that it’s all positive. The title of your speech is the first place to start: does it grab the audience’s imagination and excite them to hear what you are going to say?

How you take the stage is the next step. If you shuffle onto the stage with your head hanging low looking like you’d really rather be anywhere else in the world than there, your audience will start to wish that they were there also. However, if instead, you project confidence as you stride up and take the stage then your audience will sit up and take notice.

Once you’ve taken the stage, we’re now back to that issue of the first words that will be tumbling out of your mouth. Here’s an interesting thought: how much time do you spend on the first sentence in your speeches? I’m going to guess that the answer is not enough. This is the million dollar waterfront real estate in your speech – it’s worth the investment of time to get it right. You want your words to start a fire in your audience’s mind – your opening needs to promise great things to come in the rest of your speech.

If Looks Matter, What Can A Speaker Do?

So clearly people will be making snap judgements about you simply based on how you look. Pick your clothes carefully. You want to look sharp and polished. The rule of thumb when giving a speech is that you always want to be the best-dressed person in the room.

Make sure that when you start to speak you speak in a loud clear voice. This will tell everyone that you are very confidant and that they should listen to what you have to say. Make sure that your body language is in agreement with the words that are coming out of your mouth. Finally, never forget to smile. When you smile your audience can’t help but smile back at you and that will go a long way in winning them over to your side.

What All Of This Means For You

As speakers we like to imagine that our speeches start when we open our mouth the first time to start speaking. Research has shown that this is not the case: our audiences are forming first impressions of us long before we reach the stage.

What this means is that we need to make sure that we dress the part and project an air of self confidence even before we reach the stage. Once there, the first words of our speech need to be crafted in order to capture our audience’s attention and hold it.

The bad news is that our audiences are prejudging us before we have a chance to show them how good of a speaker we are. The good news is that now we know that they are doing this and with a little effort, we can use this knowledge to make sure that we get them to make a positive first impression and then we’ve got them right where we want them to be.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills

Question For You: What do you think is the most important thing that you can do to make a good first impression with your audience?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Congratulations – you’ve been asked to give a speech. Got one to give? Unless someone has asked you to deliver a speech that you’ve already given multiple times, you’re probably in the spot that most speakers find themselves all too often – standing in the middle of tracks while the train known as your speaking date comes racing towards you. What’s an accidental communicator to do?

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The Clothes That A Speaker Wears Are A Powerful Speaking Tool (c) - 2008

The purpose of giving any speech is to be able to reach out and connect with your audience. No matter whether you are trying to inform them, entertain them, or convince them to take some action, none of this can be done unless you are able to make a connection with them. What you say is an important part of doing this, but did you know that what you wear also plays a role?

What Your Clothes Say About You

I’m hoping that most of us already know enough to “dress up” when we go to give a speech. If you pick up any popular book on public speaking, you’ll find advice like “be the best dressed person in the room” and such.

What’s interesting is that it’s probably too much of a simplification to think of our clothes as being just that – clothes. Instead, Karen Hudson who retired from the movie business says that we should think about what we are wearing as being costumes that are “scenery on the move“.

Now I can already see some of you starting to roll your eyes – I mean really, costumes? Give me just a minute to explain. Your time with your audience is limited - 15, 30, 60 minutes, right? You need to grab their attention, hold it, and make a difference in their lives.

What tools do you have to do this with? Sure your words are important. Probably how you say the words (pitch, tone, etc.) also play a role. However, what else do you have? Not much! If you can start to think about what you are wearing as being yet another speaking tool, then all of a sudden you’ve got another “lever to pull” to get your audience to connect with you.

Different Speeches Require Different Types Of Clothes

Not all speeches are the same. In fact, you need to be aware of what type of speech you will be giving and then you need to dress appropriately in order to lend even more power to your speech.

Speaking To Inform

When you are speaking to inform your audience you will be presenting either lots of information or technical concepts in order to make your point. When doing this type of speaking, first impressions are quickly made by your audience when they are trying to determine if they are going to make the effort to listen to what you have to say.

For this type of speech your goal is going to be to establish your credibility in the field in which you are going to be talking about at first glance. You have two things that you want to quickly accomplish: you want your audience to understand that you are an expert in this field, and you want them to accept your credibility for speaking to them. What all this means is that your clothes have to convey a sense of strength, power, and leadership to your audience.

Speaking To Inspire

Things change when the purpose of your speech is to inspire your audience to take some action. What you are trying to do is to relate a story to your audience in a way that will provide them with a new point-of-view that will cause them to make a change.

For this type of speech, you are not trying to overpower your audience with your credibility. Instead, what you really want to do is to be able to inspire your audience. This means that you want your audience to reach out to you – to accept your ideas as theirs and to then grow because of these ideas.

This means that you want to come across as being three things all at once: credible, authoritative, and accessible. From a clothing point-of-view, this means that you are going to want to be less formal than you would be for a speech in which you were speaking to inform. Your clothing should present your audience with a softer, more conversational image of you.

Speaking To Entertain

Arguably you have the widest range of clothing choices when you are giving a speech that is designed to entertain your audience. Ultimately you are going to be telling your audience a story and you hope that by doing this you’ll be able to grab their attention and hold on to it throughout your entire presentation. In the end your goal is to allow them to fully enjoy what you have to tell them.

Your clothing can be a key part of how you go about doing this. Depending on the story that you are going to be sharing with your audience, your clothing can set the stage before you even open your mouth. You can go all out and dress up in a full costume, or you can simply add a particular accessory to what you would normally wear (e.g. an Abraham Lincoln top hat) in order to make your audience eager to hear your story from the moment they first lay eyes on you.

Final Thoughts

Hudson points out that when she was taking a screenwriting class, she learned that each character mist contribute to the outcome of the story. You can say the same thing about the clothes that you wear to give a speech: each item must contribute directly to the telling of the story and its final outcome.

This leads to the three key guidelines that control what we wear when we are speaking:

1. The clothes should never take the focus off of you, the speaker.
2. No matter what you wear, you will need to be able to perform comfortable and effectively in the costume and accessories.
3. Time is of the essence – your costume should not tell more story that you have time to present.

Take the time to pick the clothes that you wear to match the speech that you will be giving and you’ll be able to intimately connect with your audience and make an lasting impact in their lives.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Man, as though giving a speech wasn’t hard enough already, then you go ahead and throw that gender thing in there and all of a sudden it gets that much tougher! It can be a challenge when you are asked to talk to an audience made up of members of the opposite gender. How can you not screw-up this speech?

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Presenters Need To Make Sure That They Look Good During Their Presentation

When we deliver a presentation, we need to make the best use of all of the tools that we have at our disposal. These tools include things such as hand gestures, using pauses, and vocal variety. All too often we forget that we have one more tool for us to use: our personal style.

Life is busy and all too often too many of us just don’t take the time to look our best when we venture out into public. The reasons for this are many – we don’t expect to meet anyone that we know, we don’t think that we’re going to be out for long, or maybe we just don’t care.

It turns out that this kind of thinking opens all sorts of doors for us as presenters. If we take the time to look our best then we’ll end up being the best looking person in the room. What this means is that everyone will be looking at us. If they are already looking at us, then we’ve got half of our task taken care of!

Carmine Gallo is a communications coach who has spent a lot of time thinking about this topic. Here are some of his suggestions that will help you use this tool to it’s fullest extent:

• Keep The Bling To A Minimum: Over time we all build up a collection of accessories. Women have a collection of flashy necklaces and too-big earrings. Men have (also) too flashy necklaces, tie holders, bracelets, etc. Remember that accessories are designed to add value to your look – not to distract from the overall package. The rule is to keep it simple and suitable for your outfit.
• Get Some Culture: This should be something that your research for any presentation reveals to you. A suit is always appropriate – except when it’s not. Make sure that you dress in a way that matches the event or the culture of your audience. Have your dress match the expectations of your audience.
• Smile For The Camera: As long as you are going to the effort of getting all gussied up for your big presentation, take the time to make sure that all of the photographs that are taken of you show how good you look. We can never have enough photos of ourselves when we are looking our bests. Find a professional photographer and get a formal picture taken of yourself – this will be invaluable to you later on.

All too often we end up spending all of our time researching what we want to say, how we want to say it, and what we want our audience to be motivated to do once we are done talking.

If we take the time to plan out how we are going to look for our next presentation then we’ll be ahead of the game before we even show up. Sometimes just taking the time to look at ourselves in the mirror before we head out the door can do wonders for making our presentation that more effective…!

Have you ever discovered that you owned any accessories that were too distracting to wear while presenting? Did you ever deliver a presentation where you were not dressed to match the culture of your audience? Have you ever had a bad photograph of you taken while you were presenting? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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